Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday August 13, 2013 @01:17PM
from the next-gen-propaganda dept.

dryriver sends in a story at Der Spiegel Online about news network Russia Today, and how it is becoming a powerful propaganda tool for Vladimir Putin to use against Western audiences. Quoting:
"Since 2005, the Russian government has increased the channel's annual budget more than tenfold, from $30 million (€22.6 million) to over $300 million. Russia Today's budget covers the salaries of 2,500 employees and contractors worldwide, 100 in Washington alone. And the channel has no budget cuts to fear now that Putin has issued a decree forbidding his finance minister from taking any such steps. The Moscow leadership views the funds going to the channel as money 'well invested,' says Natalya Timakova, the press attaché to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. 'In addition, Russia Today is — and I hope the Germans will forgive me for this remark — significantly more modern than Deutsche Welle, for example, and it also has more money.' ... Russia Today sees itself as a champion of a global audience critical of the West. But it is also meant to amplify the self-doubts of Europeans and Americans who have been forced by recent events to wonder if their own countries — like Russia and China — are corrupt and in the grip of a pervasive intelligence apparatus. In any case, the station has a rare knack for propaganda. ... To spice up the news, directors sometimes use Hollywood-like special effects, such as a computer-animated tank that looks like it is rolling over the newscaster's feet or Israeli fighter jets that fly a virtual loop through the studio before dropping their bombs over a map of Syria."

In 10 or 15 years, Edward Snowden will be remembered as a defector in the New Cold War during Putin's reign. Once enough Russians become unhappy with the puppet show, they will push Putin and Medvedev out.

Putin might die before that of old age, despite his publicists publishing him as a youthful person.

Or maybe he dies leading some bear cubs to safety or some shit like that.

He might just as well fire all that russia today staff, it's not really doing shit for him and there's just too much shit happening/happened in russia for past decade that he can't just pile it under some other shit.

but a new russian revolt? nah. they won't do that unless he makes the mistake of increasing vodka pricing again - if you're

Snowden did not run straight to Russia. He went to HK first, then to Russia with the intent of transiting to another destination. His passport was revoked and he was stranded with the additional threats of having any plane he might board to get out of Russia being detained and him rendered back to the USA.

There is no evidence that he provided any intel to Russia. Considering that he is essentially boxed in, he has no choice but to ask for asylum from Russia. I am sure that Snowden is quite aware of the irony of his situation, but it wasn't by his design or intent.

Please cease commenting on Snowden until you can get the basic facts about his situation straight.

So, if you plan to piss off the US Powers that Be, where would you run if you didn't want your media circus "trial", torture, and eventual confession to raping puppies, beheading the pope, and leaving your car alarm to screech all night to undermine the credibility of your verifiable claims of organized government overreach?

I'm pretty sure they will not tell Snowden - "You can stay here as long as you want as a Guest of the State - and we will not ask you any questions about the NSA."

They have an intel source on their soil - and they will get information out him, whether Snowden wants to or not. If Snowden is unwilling to hand over American secrets to the Russians, It is not too much to assume that the FSB or the SVR ( or both ) will Snowden's rooms and record

I actually think US news sources are more like Pravda. Every single one is nothing more than an arm of the US government. The only way to get any news that is even remotely objective and not wildly pro-government biased is to seek foreign news sources like Al Jazeera, RT, or the BBC. So it's a Pot meet Kettle kind of situation. I actually think RT.com, at least the American section, is quite a bit less biased than any US source of news.

Also the fact that you are spreading lies and calling Snowden a traitor probably means that you get your paycheck from the US government. I think you are a bit too obvious though. Haven't you guys ever heard of subtlety? If you want to serve your masters well it would be better to town down some of the more obvious defector/traitor verbiage. You can't be an effective cyber warrior if it is obvious to everyone that that is what you are.

I actually think US news sources are more like Pravda. Every single one is nothing more than an arm of the US government. The only way to get any news that is even remotely objective and not wildly pro-government biased is to seek foreign news sources like Al Jazeera, RT, or the BBC. So it's a Pot meet Kettle kind of situation. I actually think RT.com, at least the American section, is quite a bit less biased than any US source of news.

You must be joking. I'm an Australian and we sometimes get RT on the local community channel, along with Deutsche Weller, Al Jazeera and in the past, Voice of America. Basically they will take any programming that's cheap and will help to fill the airtime.

Russia Today is a straight out propaganda channel. It's the opposite side of Fox News' coin. If anyone at all has a negative opinion on the US, they will immediately be dragged before RT's cameras and invited to repeat it. I'd like to see the editorial staff of RT and Fox News be placed in a caged death match fight, then shoot the survivors.

Strangely I thought the pieces from Voice of America were fairly balanced and neutral, although many of them were just life-style interest pieces. The most balanced foreign news seems to come from DW and Al Jazeera.

One of the funniest things I saw on RT was a studio interview with the body guard of Viktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms dealer who was captured by US authorities in a sting operation in Thailand in 2008. Bout thought he was selling Igla anti-aircraft missiles and MI-24 Hind helicopters to FARC guerrillas, with delivery thrown in for an extra $5 million. So this body guard, who was a HUGE thug with no neck, sat perched on the edge of a studio chair recounting how it was all a mistake and they were just in Thailand for a harmless holiday. Bwahahahaha . . . hilarious.

It reminded me of an ancient Benny Hill routine where he was recounting how he and his mates had just been out on the town for a little innocent fun — in Soho at 3 am in the morning

Well I only just started checking out RT.com during the Snowden situation. They seemed to have better, more neutral coverage than US news sources. Although that may not be saying much since the US news sources seem like they are getting their articles written for them by the US administration.

Perhaps RT is usually more biased and made an exception for the Snowden story because you couldn't make up better stuff than that. I'm only talking about the written web site coverage. I haven't viewed any videos or wa

And all this snowden bullshit. You know... blow the whistle on domestic spying is one thing. Running straight to Russia and buying some asylum by blabbing about US spy activities in foreign countries makes him nothing but a traitor.

A traitor, definitely, to the US government. However they no longer represent the people of this country. So, yes a traitor to the government, but a hero to the people. See where this is going.

RT as it is today looks increasingly like Al Jazeera. What Putin has learned from AJ is that having a free press can be a great thing - as long as they're busy telling the truth and uncovering corruption and injustice somewhere else. You couldn't possibly stop all the annoying (to a tyrant) idealistic journalists of the world, but there's enough injustice in the world to distract them. Instead of suppressing democratic sen

that's a good idea, I'll start capitalizing correctly once someone uses their capital to pay for it. I though I already used punctuation unless it means puncturing some dude - in which case, no, I don't do that. maybe for enough money but even then just once.

The Russian Mob makes the Mafia look like a load of summer campers. They don't even have to make the offer, just give him that cold, blue-eyed stare and he will volunteer because the alternative is finding himself accidentally in a diplomatic packet heading from Moscow to New York.

Clearly there are conservative-military people in the US who want to restart the cold war. Russia is not our enemy anymore. All of this hate toward our Russian friends makes me sad. The smear campaign against Snowden has now extended to Russia. It really is embarrassing to be an American these days. We must look like such angry, violent idiots to the rest of the world. The dumb bully of the planet.

I like Russia. I like its culture. I like its language. It isn't the USSR anymore. I think I'd actually prefer

Go ahead and jump on the next plane to Russia. If you are going to pimp their qualities you best get a first hand look at your shining city on the hill. Why you are there see if you can find out if they are publishing the body count from Syria. Russians don't have gag orders when speaking about the government they use a more effective and permanent technique usually referred to as murder by the more uppity countries in the world.

How do you know all of this? Have you lived there? Also what does Syria have to do with anything? Does the fighting in Syria affect day to day life in Russia?

The US is just as bad or worse when it comes to unnecessary foreign wars as entertainment. As far as murder, ask Yemeni and Pakistani children who've lost friends and siblings to US missiles about murder. They may not agree with you that Russia is worse in that respect.

It certainly sounds like the US and Russia are preparing for a war-by-proxy in Syria. It's great - you get to show off your state-of-the-art war machines to your populace and your "adversary", without any threat of real repercussion - it's all somebody else's hometown that get's leveled, and both sides can deny that they intended the horrors of war. Meanwhile that good old patriotic drumbeat helps to rally the population around the leaders in the face of a "threatening adversary". Nobody wants a war on t

Actually I have been there 3 times for a total of 5 weeks primarily for work. The Russians are backing Assad in Syria with weapons large and small which means they also support Hezbolla and Iranian policies. Personally I don't really give a shit about Russia or any of the middle eastern states. The only thing I do tend to support is total withdrawal of the US military from that region and let all those countries settle their own problems. After a minimum of 5 years we should re-evaluate the situation and se

You will rarely if ever hear one of those outlets cast a critical eye towards liberal policies. They are are just as biased left as fox is biased right.

You might try looking at the networks' coverage of Snowden to see how wrong this is. "Liberal" MSNBC and NPR (can't speak for the others) have actually been mostly neutral, sometimes supportive, toward him; Fox is the one insisting he's a traitor or bringing on Washington talking heads who do.

But no, don't do anything drastic like examine your beliefs. Just keep it up with the "both sides are equally bad" meme, but actually requires no critical thought whatsoever.

You might try looking at the networks' coverage of Snowden to see how wrong this is. "Liberal" MSNBC and NPR (can't speak for the others) have actually been mostly neutral, sometimes supportive, toward him; Fox is the one insisting he's a traitor or bringing on Washington talking heads who do.

I haven't noticed this neutrality you speak of in any US news outlet and I searched hard for an exception. It was depressing to think that every choice was anti-Snowden, pro surveillance state propaganda. To get neutrality you have to go to foreign news outlets. Pretty much any foreign news source actually seems to get you out of the everything-the-US-government-does-is-wonderful reality distortion field.

The Snowden story is actually the first time I've realized that the US media has gotten quite this bad.

The BBC frequently runs AP stories just like Fox. I think world wide they have more and better reporters, but those people are not often published.

Alas, with all the cuts to the BBC it is suffering a bit, but still far, far better than Fox.

Fox is the mouthpiece of Rupert Murdoch, same as The Sun (and former Sun on Sunday - News of the World) they're all rotten to the core and great friends with conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic.

Different propaganda is not better propaganda, but it's always hard to see through our own delusions. The boards of the BBC answer to the same people Murdoch's companies do. One of those people gets paid to sit on her old wrinkled ass and collect 35 million pounds a year from her UK serfs. Her kids live in luxury too, though at least one of them tries to behave like a citizen.

Indeed. The best news I have found in the English-speaking world are the various *BCs of the Commonwealth countries. BBC being the most well-known example, but the CBC (Canada) and ABC (Australia) are both excellent too. Public broadcasters, no ads, less political bias (not to say there is none - but they generally have much tougher editorial guidelines and charters of responsibility than corporate news organisations). All three have a good, free web presence. All three have good 24h news TV and radio channels... the latter are freely available globally if you have the right equipment and can be streamed online/accessed via an app like TuneIn Radio). The TV channels are a bit trickier to get - BBC is available in the US if you have cable I think, the others stream online but would require a VPN.

I could point out that the BBC is really just Britain's Russia Today, and go into details why, but it would be a distraction from the more fundamental issue.

Most news organisations operate in the same non-objective way whether they are government controlled or completely commercial. They report more favourably on their host country (and allies) than on enemies. For example, the BBC will report on Iranian police violence against protesters very harshly. It will be implied that the police violence is extre

Same thought here... I grew up watching CBC and the french "Le Journal" for news. When I see Fox/NBC/CNN news ads on American networks I don't even register them as 'news' but something akin to Entertainment Tonight (which has better journalism).

I skim RT daily. But you know what? An *awful* lot of their content is blatant and clumsy propaganda.

It's truly the "National Enquirer" of the news sites I visit on a daily basis. The only reason I don't go anywhere else for a Russian perspective on the news is I haven't found any other english-translated Russian sites. Given a choice, I'd never go to that trash-rag again.

I watch their video stream at home. their coverage of human rights issues inside Russia is the darkest of comedies, and their skew on Syria is super obvious, but I'm in the market for a news source critical of my government, and they certainly fit the bill better than MSNBC or CNN.

I skim RT daily. But you know what? An *awful* lot of their content is blatant and clumsy propaganda.

It's truly the "National Enquirer" of the news sites I visit on a daily basis. The only reason I don't go anywhere else for a Russian perspective on the news is I haven't found any other english-translated Russian sites. Given a choice, I'd never go to that trash-rag again.

I get the feeling RT is trying to fill whatever gaps are left between wind-up commentators and news-fo-tainment in the West. The word Tommyrot comes to mind.

I never felt they were that bad... The videos i almost never watch- that stuff isn't so good. The written propaganda I never felt that bad about because it's almost like they want you to know it... I feel insulted by Fox News because they seem serious about their propaganda while RT doesn't. When the truth aligns with them, or they don't care, they do a pretty good job-- and now I know why-- they have the staff and in the USA most "news" sources are just filling up space/time because they have no resource

Are you implying that Fox, CNN, NBC, ABC, The NY Post, the AP, or any of the other entertainment^W News in the US is not propaganda? We need to get "News" from somewhere. I think its wise to try and teach people to recognize and find facts in propaganda, and look for the agendas. The Ostrich can bury it's head in the sand, but still gets eaten.

I thought RT was just supposed to be the Fox News of Russia? Basically an arm of the political party willing to repeat whatever they're told. You can't blame either of them, it's a very profitable thing to do.

How is this so called "blatant propaganda" different from the blatant propaganda from every corporate or government news source in the US? Among Americans at least 50% think Snowden is one of the good guys and not a traitor and shouldn't be punished, but every major US news outlet consistently paints Snowden in the worst possible light doing their best to help the government out as much as possible with its blatant character assassinations and smears.

I read RT for the first time today and was surprised how crude it was. It consisted mostly of articles that were obviously written to stir up hatred/anger towards the US, and towards the west more generally. One article referred to the Bank of England as "monetary jihadists" and claimed they are "financial terrorists".

That kind of propaganda is just way too crude. The average person can see through it.

RT would be much more persuasive if they toned it down a lot. Right now, it's just silly.

The Russians have always been the best in the world at propaganda. A book that covers this really well from a former insider is the Sword and the Shield [amazon.com] by Christopher Andrew (Author) and Vasili Mitrokhin.

In the US we fought back using abstract art [theartnewspaper.com]. Back then great pains were taken to hide propaganda, nowadays the great pains to hide things are taken by advertising companies on behalf of multinationals...

I would suggest you read the book then. They were instrumental in the development of organizations like the Black Panthers, shaping of the BBC, the JFK assassination theories and any number of other similar propaganda works. By way of oversimplification, Vietnam was not lost on the battlefield, it was lost on the printing presses of the West. Influencing outcomes indirectly without it being obvious they were at work was what they excelled at.

At least RT is outwardly funded and influenced by the state so you can make your own determination as to the validity of any of their reporting. I would prefer to know there is a government backed bias instead of having secret influence on the media like there is in many US news outlets.

Russia Today has an edge simply because it has a big reporting staff. This is unusual in the US today. Only the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post have serious world reporting staffs any more.

RT is biased, but it's no worse than Fox News. The embarrassing thing for Americans is that RT doesn't have to make up bad stuff about the US. They just put the bad stuff at the top of their pages.

Russia Today has an edge simply because it has a big reporting staff. This is unusual in the US today. Only the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post have serious world reporting staffs any more.

RT is biased, but it's no worse than Fox News. The embarrassing thing for Americans is that RT doesn't have to make up bad stuff about the US. They just put the bad stuff at the top of their pages.

It's funny that RT takes direct pot shots at CNN/MSNBC, when Fox News has a lot more "pro-west" things to say that are critical of Russia (and foreigners in general). It's as if they know that taking pot shots at Fox would basically be two elephant hunters going after each other, instead of the elephant.

When using propaganda, you want to target more legitimate sources of information (CNN/MSNBC are terrible by European/UK/Australian standards but still a lot better than Fox) and paint them as inaccurate and unreliable because the people who use these sources tend to be more rational and capable of doubt.

Fox News is pretty much US (Republican) propaganda, so the people who trust this source have already made a decision about what they think and are merely looking for a source to confim their pre-existing world veiw. It makes no sense to target Fox News (except for comic releif) with propaganda as the bias and ignorance of the audience makes them largely immune to it.

Go ahead and watch online: Two channels in English. [rt.com] Sad that there is a demand for news bent to the side of a human right abuser like Russia. But the Obama administration (like the Bush administration) before has been so corrupt that outside views are needed.

Go ahead and watch online: Two channels in English. [rt.com] Sad that there is a demand for news bent to the side of a human right abuser like Russia. But the Obama administration (like the Bush administration) before has been so corrupt that outside views are needed.

When I was young, I used to listen to Radio Moscow, Radio Peking on shortwave radio, to get the perspective from the other side. Now I can just browse a website. Still, a lot of propaganda on all sides. The truth tends to lie somewhere in the middle.

Just don't get stuck into the trap of aiming for the middle simply because both sides have a bias. Then you are no better than the Americans.... who continually shift beyond Mussolini's Fascism without realizing it.

The modern Russian media is if anything worse than the old Pravda was. If you've recently had the pleasure of trying to have a political discussion with a Russian national, you'll notice quickly that they basically live in an entirely different universe than everyone else. Seriously, day-long Fox News viewers are well-grounded in reality compared to these folks.

In the Russian universe, the driving force behind everything is the USA. Literally everything, even stuff your typical American would claim to neither know nor give a shit about. The entire Arab Spring was started and driven by outside USA agitators. All those protestors you see on TV? All fakes (or paid US agents). They'll do the same in Russia too, given half the chance. You see, NGO's are also all CIA organizations acting to overthrow governments. Thus attacking NGO's is a patriot's duty.

It'll be fun when they start trying to seriously peddle this stuff in the West. I'd laugh it off as clearly unbelievable, but I used to do that with the 700 Club when it started on TV too. Some people bought it, and that made it important, no matter how clearly silly it all was.

For that reason I'd actually advocate taking in some Russian media, just so their behavior will start to make some sense to you. Syrians, wonder why Russia works so hard to keep your local tyrant in power? The answer's there. Americans, wonder what Russians seem to have against anything at all your country publicly seems to want? The answer's there too.

That was that "Fox News" universe I was talking about. Check out a recent interview with Cheney sometime (if you have the stomach for it). He's still insisting the WMDs were really there somewhere, and they just failed to find them. These aren't "lies" exactly, because he honestly, fervently believes this stuff. As I said, different universe.

In the Russian universe, the driving force behind everything is the USA.

Not everything, of course. You are exaggerating. But there are reasons why NGOs are hated so much. The reasons are in their history. NGOs formed - and were financed by the USA - as soon as Gorbachev made it possible. It was not perceived as bad at that time. But as those NGOs started pushing US policies in Russia, and as those policies started to crash and burn, the opinion flipped. NGOs' reputation was tarnished. Today the leaders o

And how do you know that it's the Russians that are wrong, and not you?

I'm not claiming "right" (whatever that is) is on my side. That's precisely why I used the metaphor of universes.

I will however, postulate that the true universe, if such a thing exists, is a very complex place. If yours has one deus ex machina that is responsible for everything (or at least everything bad) that happens, it is clearly pretty damn far off of true. Just a nice rule of thumb for you, whatever country you live in and whatever view of the world you chose to embrace.

Your original statement "they basically live in an entirely different universe than everyone else " betrayed your underlying assumption that YOUR own universe is the "true" one in your mind

Nope. All that says is that if one were to draw a Venn diagram of "universes", the circle representing theirs would not intersect anyone else's circle much at all. It does not say there are only two circles on the Venn diagram, nor does it say that any circle is any better than any other. Please don't add in stuff that I didn't say.

Most news media spews propoganda in some respect even if when that respect is apolitical in the form of human laziness, lack of knowledge or button pushing and invocation of hyperbole to attract interest/ratings.

As long as you understand context only real question does SNR of nonsense and propoganda to useful objective information make media x worth yer time 2 parse.

yes, it's mostly propaganda - just like all the western "news outlets". The difference is that it's different propaganda and that's quite refreshing, it's one source of information which doesn't parrot the same garbage all the rest spew out.

English Russia [englishrussia.com]. Mostly photo-essay / slideshow style, but with really high quality, large images. Tons of urban exploration [englishrussia.com] themed stories, for example. Very neat.

One of the reasons that I think the mainstream press has been biting it online is that many of them still think 300-pixel-wide images are acceptable for covering a story. I have a camera where I can shoot someone's photo from a block away and practically see their nosehairs, news photographers are shooting with the same or better, and they're posting crappy, overcompressed, over-contrasted, tiny garbage.

The Boston Globe's Big Picture [boston.com] posts images 990x660, and they're so much better it's astounding. They're standard newswire photos - just not compressed to hell and shrunk to the size of a postage stamp like they are almost everywhere else!

English Russia is indeed very fascinating, if a bit prophetic in their urban exploration sections where they visit places that have been abandoned since the Soviet collapse, including places that shouldn't have been completely abandoned!

So are we pretending now that the United States doesn't have it's own State Media propaganda outlets? And no I'm not talking about Fox news or MSNBC. They are basically extensions of their respective political parties but not directly run by the feds.

That's right, The United States of America, beacon of freedom, land of the free, home of the brave, will now have a State media organization dedicated to manipulating the American people into believing their government is Righteous and good.

greater than 1% of our population is in prison.We have a never ending nebulous "War on Terror"We have a secret domestic spy network that captures all of your communicationsOur government now imprisons people indefinitely without warrant, cause or judicial oversight.Our president now orders the death of foreigners AND American citizens without any oversight what-so-ever as long as he feels they are an imminent threat.

Welcome to the the Police state.Russia's not looking so bad now is it?

You'll find RT on YouTube if you can't figure out where its hiding in your cable line up. In my market Comcast has it on two channels that are generically labeled "Leased Access" on all of the TV Listings. I've never seen anything listing channel RT on any published lineup. If you are flipping channels, RT will have a green logo and wire crawl. Its like CNN without commercials, but regular intervals of station ID breaks.

The Kaiser Report runs Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, but I still can't figure out

Keiser must be dueling with the onion for shrillness. On second thought I like how onion news anchors always keep their cool, one of the women actually looked like she had been botoxed to prevent any accidental smiles.

This is what media does. It's funny to point out Russia, there are three fingers aiming back at you. This is what media is: using Threat Narrative, misinformation and filtering to Manufacture Consent. [youtube.com]

Do yourself a favor and watch the video I linked. Realize the truth: There are no absolutes, everything is multifaceted. You can deliver some good info while also furthering an agenda. This is the Information Age, and it will quickly become the Dark Age 2.0 if we are not wise about the information we ac

Russia Today sees itself as a champion of a global audience critical of the West. But it is also meant to amplify the self-doubts of Europeans and Americans who have been forced by recent events to wonder if their own countries â" like Russia and China â" are corrupt and in the grip of a pervasive intelligence apparatus.

I find it odd that this role is considered bad. Certainly it would be bad in an authoritarian regime. But in a democracy that is the precise role of the 4th estate - they shouldn't be telling us everything is fine when it isn't and frankly it is never fine, how does that saying go? The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

"Russia Today.. is also meant to amplify the self-doubts of Europeans and Americans who have been forced by recent events to wonder if their own countries -- like Russia and China -- are corrupt and in the grip of a pervasive intelligence apparatus".

Without the pretext of the Cold War, it is patently obvious that the US is continuing its war on Democracy..

While the RT agenda is fairly obvious and I don't question that some of the info is skewed in some way, I find it a much more reliable outlet than CNN, MSNBC, FOX, or the plethora of other vacuous and blatantly false media outlets available here in the US.

I can find some decent reporting on the RT, and almost none of it is about Honey Boo Boo and Kim Kardashian, so......... It's a much better news source than most of the gheystream media.

"To spice up the news, directors sometimes use Hollywood-like special effects, such as a computer-animated tank that looks like it is rolling over the newscaster's feet or Israeli fighter jets that fly a virtual loop through the studio before dropping their bombs over a map of Syria."

They did lots of early stories on the NSA I thought were tinfoil hat stuff until recently.

They probably have a lot more practices at this at the NKVD and 'ad a larf when watching how easily a conscientious objector contractor exposed everything - where fear of running afoul of Putin keeps everyone in line in the Russia Spying on Russians biz. If you doubt it, look up what became of Alexander Litvinenko.

When reality isn't aligned to their agenda, then they employ propaganda - and from what I've read so far it's not as moronic as what Fox News does.

RT is loads better than Fox News. Of course when it comes to reporting on the west, they don't need to try -- the west is screwing itself; they can just report honestly. I frankly have been surprised they got into topics with the USA that Russia has trouble with - you'd think they wouldn't want to bring up the whole topic... which was how old propaganda worked..

Also, Russia has been taking steps since Putin returned to the Presidency to define itself by seeking an identity that opposes the West in an attempt to assert their own relevance and independence from the West. You can see this in their recent cozying up to the Eastern Orthodox Church in recent years with their strengthening anti-gay stance and prosecuting members of Pussy Riot for blasphemy.

Putin is a former part of the Cold War machine who seems interested in restarting it. He also does no

American propaganda is shaped and manufactured by the mega-corporations that captured US government, decades ago.

Example:GE. They bring you the "News" and the bombs dropped. And the planes that carried them. And the un-earned income for the former congressman who voted to both fund their development and purchase, as well as vote the extra-constitutional "authorization of force", by which they are expended.